Baklava Fail

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

And here, at the kitchen of dreambird and her trusty sidekick, we tried. We really did.

It started benignly enough. The dough for this lovely item is like a marshmallow--so smoothy and supple that it's like kneading a cloud. A good start, I thought.  But then, after letting it sit for the required two hours, the dread began...

We rolled, and rolled, and rolled that phyllo dough until we were blue in the arms and the dough was see-through. We stacked it with copious amounts of flour between the sheets, as per instructions, and low and behold...the sheets stuck together, leaving us with a hardened mess. So we re-rolled. And something about the re-rolling did not allow them to become as thin as before. Nor as supple.

We poured the syrup over the baked baklava, indulging in the sizzle and snap of the liquid meeting the hot dough--just as described! And we waited overnight for the syrup to sink in.

Baklava for breakfast! we thought.

The next morning, we had tasty, sticky sweet lumps of condensed gluten-ized cake for breakfast. Not the flaky, buttery, moist concoction of which we had been dreaming. A bit like stale crackers bathed in syrup. Tasty, yes, but not what one is hoping for.

We swore we'd make another batch before the 27th (today) posting date for Daring Bakers. We did (thus the horrible photos--we were saving the professional photo shoot for the baklava triumph). But as the days move on, I cared less and less about my inability to make phyllo dough, and was more and more convicted that Baklava might be best baked by someone else.

Maybe you are that someone else. And if so, here is the recipe. God speed.